Hurricane Paloma hammers Cuba

RAY SANCHEZSun Sentinel

Published Monday, November 10, 2008

SANTA CRUZ DEL SUR, Cuba -- Two miles of this town are gone.

Wooden houses lay in piles of splintered wood. The concrete walls of a two-story factory have crumbled into rubble. The streets are covered with six inches of mud and strewn with clothing, broken furniture and soggy books.

They would have held a procession here Sunday, just like they do every year, celebrating the anniversary of the hurricane that hit in 1932, killing 3,000 with a brutal storm surge that wiped much of the town away.

Instead, the people of this coastal fishing town are slowly returning to find their homes and belongings gone, and trying to figure out how they'll start over.

One of them is Fernando Zamora Reyes, 51. A member of the local civil defense squad, Zamora spent two days helping evacuate others. This morning he returned to find his wooden home torn apart. The walls toppled like a house of cards. The roof collapsed, crushing the furniture inside.

He had built the home himself.

"Today," he said, "I come back to this. There's nothing left."

Hurricane Paloma, which crashed ashore as a ferocious Category 4 hurricane Saturday night, has slowed to a punishing crawl over Cuba. It's still lashing the island with heavy wind and rain nearly 18 hours after making landfall, but it's breaking apart on its way northeast.

At 10 a.m. Sunday, Paloma's eye was still near Camaguey, trudging north-northeast at barely 5 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The hurricane smashed onto the island with winds of 145 mph Saturday evening, and quickly dropped in intensity over land. Current estimates put the wind speed at 60 mph, and dwindling.

But the threat of life-threatening flash floods and mudslides remains as the soggy storm slogs its way over Cuba's eastern end.

Official state-run media on the island reported widespread damage in the storm's path. The storm surge rushed more than a mile inland in the vicinity of Santa Cruz del Sur, where Paloma came ashore. Power and telephone lines tumbled to the ground. Toppled trees lay scattered throughout the region.

It was the most powerful storm to hit the area in more than 60 years. Still, no deaths have been reported in connection with the hurricane.

Some 220,000 people evacuated in advance of the storm, including nearly 6,000 from Santa Cruz del Sur.

Among them, Reynaldo Alfaro, who returned to find is home nothing more than a pile of splintered rubble.

The rest of his family remained in a government shelter in Camaguey.

"They don't know, he said. "I don't want them to see this."

Paloma delivered a direct hit on a country still reeling from the devastating impact of back-to-back storms in late August and early September.

Roofs remain off houses. Food is in short supply. Electric power was restored just this week to parts of this province where Paloma came ashore. It went out again at just about 8 p.m., and remains off this morning.

Hurricanes Ike and Gustav together caused an estimated $9.4 billion in damage. As many as 140,000 homes were damaged or destroyed and nearly a third of Cuba's crops were destroyed, causing widespread shortages.

Camaguey was particularly hard-hit. Hurricane Ike severely damaged the electrical and telephone systems. Parts of the province's southern coast remained underwater from surging seas and overflowing rivers for days after the storm.

Now, as repair crews head out to assess the damage this morning, Cuba faces the daunting task of rebuilding, yet again.

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